Part IV - Another Libyan Crisis

But nearly two weeks into the trip the entire Dakar stalls due to, of all things, a terrorist threat. Not a silly bomb scare, but a bona fide terrorist group claiming a force of 300 armed men and 40 armored vehicles who threaten to storm the bivouac. After confirmation by the French government and the CIA, Dakar officials decide to stop in Niamey, Niger for a week while preparations are made to airlift the entire rally across the border to the safety of Libya (HA!). Scott and I busied ourselves with the task of producing interesting programming for cars that weren't running, people who weren't racing and an event that was not occurring. 48 hours before we were to be airlifted to the "safety" of Libya, Scott and I learned that Speedvision's attorneys had found out about our little jaunt to Libya and had done what all lawyers everywhere are paid to do… make sure that nothing happens. Since Americans were forbidden to travel in Libya, we were forced to shoot a solid week of programming in one collosal, 17 hour work day (with Scott working even longer and harder to edit our shots). Disgruntled that we were unable to send Speedvision the stories and programming that we'd worked so hard for, Scott and I taped 7 days of programming in advance, left the tapes to be fed daily via satellite in our absence, and made arrangements to be anywhere besides Niger within 24 hours.

On such short notice Speedvision was unable to prepay our airline tickets to Paris. We tried desperately to get someone to accept our credit cards to no avail and ended up missing our flight competely. One last plane was scheduled to leave the following day. Scrounging up $1,800 in borrowed money, we made the last flight out of Niger with 90 minutes to spare and flew all night back to Paris, while the Dakar went on without us.

We spent two happy days resting in Paris and enjoying the fine resturants recommended to us by our English friend Carlton Kirby, but by day 3 we were itching to get back. We'd come all the way across the world to do a job and both Scott and I felt like we were being robbed of the opportunity. On the 4th day we flew from Paris to Cairo, from Cairo to the south of Egypt, and by taxi to the Libyan border where we rejoined the Dakar and went straight back to work within minutes of our arrival. We shot everything we could in the last 4 days of the rally in a desperate attempt to send as much quality material back to American television as possible and actually ended up with some excellent footage. On January 24th, the Dakar ended as scheduled at the foot of the pyramids in Egypt.